The decision by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- joined by Yemen and Libya -- to sever ties with and place sanctions on Qatar is a harsh blow to the small principality on the Persian Gulf coast, which until Monday considered itself an omnipotent empire that had the Middle East wrapped around its little finger. Wealth and media -- oil money and the Al Jazeera television station -- gave Qatar an illusion of power that allowed it to become the bad boy, or at least the annoying brat, of the Arab world. Its leaders' ambition of filling a central role in the region, and especially of irritating Saudi Arabia -- its "big sister," with whom the Qataris share the Wahhabi view of Islam -- consistently led to them to think or do the direct opposite of what the other Arab states were thinking or doing. In the past, this was almost charming. Al Jazeera is a television channel with teeth, which did not hesitate to address matters considered taboo in the discourse of the Arab world. It also criticized the Arab dictatorships, although not Qatar itself and not the dictatorships that Qatar was wooing, such as the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad (at least until the revolution and the Syrian civil war erupted). Qatar was also willing to normalize relations with Israel back in the mid-1990s. But Qatar, apparently, forgot its limitations. In recent years, the Qatari method of surviving while staying relevant and maintaining influence was to adopt a policy of playing both sides of the field. On one hand, it hosted the American military command in the Middle East on its soil, while on the other it kept up close ties with Iran. It took a critical stance toward autocratic regimes in the Arab world while maintaining its own "enlightened dictatorship" at home, where it tramples on the rights of foreign laborers, who comprise most of the residents of the emirates and who are not entitled to even the most fundamental civil rights. In the name of openness and freedom of information and speech, Al Jazeera consciously turned into a mouthpiece for extremist forces in the Islamic world, of whom the Muslim Brotherhood was one of the more "moderate." The channel threw itself behind Hezbollah, and of course Hamas, not to mention other radical movements in the Arab world, which for some reason always opted for Al Jazeera as a way of disseminating their message. When terrorists struck Israel, Al Jazeera rallied behind Hamas or Hezbollah. When terrorists struck Europe, someone sympathetic to the terrorists would always be found on Al Jazeera. But Cairo's patience ran out as terrorism reared its head in Egypt, and Al Jazeera attacked the regime of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, portraying him as the one responsible for the wave of terrorist attacks in the country. But it wasn't only media coverage supportive of terrorism that came out of Qatar, it was actual financial support for radical organizations throughout the Arab world. The Qatari capital is home to the exiled leadership of Hamas, which U.S. President Donald Trump labeled a terrorist organization shortly before his recent visit to the region, and the Egyptians and the Saudis are afraid that the Qataris are encouraging radical movements operating within their own borders. Qatar has a new ruler, who is still finding his way. The Arab states are now holding a gun to his head and demanding that he come back to the fold and stop playing the role of the bad boy of the Arab world. The question is how far they will go, and whether Qatar will be able to stand up to their pressure. In the past, Qatar has seen ups and downs in its relations with its Gulf neighbors, as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but in the end it always did what it wanted. This time, it appears that the Arabs are at the end of their rope and are no longer willing to overlook Qatar's refusal to fall into line. We can assume that, as in the past, a compromise will be reached, possibly through American mediation. Qatar will kick out the Hamas leaders for a time, and Al Jazeera will tone down its criticism of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The crisis will pass, but the problem Qatar poses to its Arab brethren will remain.
